John Doom said:
Anakin being a teenager when he met Obi-wan seems to fit with my timeline (which I guess is good :D)
Still, if Oragan met during the Clone Wars Obi-wan, why would Leia call him "Ben" knowing his original name? I guess she didn't want to let people know about his secret.
Mon Mothma's background seems to fit perfectly in ROTS's deleted scenes, but she was a senator during Palpatine's rise to power, so how old Palpatine really is? Senators are supposed to be at least 50 years old to be elected, not to mention that Mothma doesn't look the same age as Palpatine at all :D
Anakin's fall has always been the most confusing part: Lucas himself gave FOUR different versions of it: politics (just like you said), power (like in the original ROTS's screenplay), love (as in ROTS) and defeat (as in the 97SE commentary). I don't know :D The OT's dialogues suggest the last interpretation, though, and no doubt he tried to kill Palpatine to save the Republic.
I'll look for COMPNOR, thanks ;)
How old is Organa supposed to be in ANH?
So, no clue as to why and when the Clone Wars began?
What the hell is a Sith? :D (one of the first Star Wars screenplays says it's an order founded to kill the Jedi, is it canon?)
Out of curiosity, is Darth vader's castle ever mentioned?
And that's it: if we manage to get these informations, it should be possible to complete the timeline (except for Palpatine's election's date)!
P.S.: Speaking about fascism, a reform has just passed which abolishes our Italian Senate and gathers power in the Prime Minister (nevermind, I didn't say anything...)
I don't see why all four reasons can't apply to Anakin's fall. Politics and Power are basically the same in this situation. Love is possible, but that seems to have been added for dramatic effect in the PT, but then again we don't know what they were planning back then. But considering how Luke and Leia's mother survived Anakin's transformation for some years it seems unlikely. Also I'm not quite sure what you mean by "defeat"? Do you mean his battle with Obi-Wan, because that still counts in the pre-PT canon. It's described in both the novelization of ROTJ and the Guide. Also his wounding serves as a metaphor for his transformation. First of all he becomes someone else physically. The in a sense dies and sells his soul to the devil, or in this case the evil Palpatine, and is resurrected but with a catch; he's now a slave to the emperor. He actually dies when he redeems himself and kills the emperor. He has already died as a good man, and therefore can't have a second life. Also the Empire is clearly a very homogeneous environment, as fascism tends to be, as well as being quite a literal war machine. And that is what Vader is as well, a killing machine. "He's more machine than man now, twisted and evil," that line is actually a pretty good description of the Empire as a whole, or even fascism in general.
(But enough symbolic analysis/rambling.)
I couldn't find an age on Bail Organa, but I get the idea that he was supposed to be a lot older than he ended up being in the PT.
It's not the greatest source, but in the 1980 radio-play of ANH there's a lot of scenes with Bail and he comes of as kind of an old king type of character. It's hard to describe, but I got a sort of Ling Theoden from LOTR vibe from the performance. That's not much to go on, but I think he was supposed to be a somewhat old man.
Mon Mothma's age is kind of weird in the timeline, but not impossible. In ROTJ she would be roughly 50 years old. However she could have been a very young senator. The Guide said that she was the youngest senator ever elected until Leia started representing Alderaan some year prior to ANH. It doesn't give a precise age though, it simply states she was elected at an "early age."
(EDIT: this last part about her age was part of the EU section of her entry. But then again, it fits with the official timeline, and Leia's unusual young age for a senator in ANH, so technically it just means that the EU had to give a logical explanation for Lucas' timeline.)
I looked up the Sith and this is literally all it said;
"The mysterious and as-yet-revealed group called the Sith causes great fear in those who know them. They are sometimes called the Dark Lords of the Sith, and Darth Vader has been identified as one of their number."
Literally no help to unravel the mystery there. Either Lucas had no clue what they were, or he was keeping it a secret until the PT-trilogy.
Also I couldn't find any mention of Vader's Castle. Does it have a specific name? I found an entry on the Emperor Citadel, but no castle with Vader's name attached. The again I might have overlook something under a different name.
Darth Id said:
Wow, Z&B, thanks for all that.
I'm frankly astounded that the 1984 Guide dates the formation of the Empire to only 18Y BBY. I really can't fathom a sensible reason why this would be, except that Lucasfilm figures Darth's turn must have coincided with its formation so that he could be good before and evil after. However, it would make a lot MORE sense if he became evil while the Empire was in full swing--after all, wouldn't that be when going dark would be the "easier, quicker path," i.e., the path of least resistance? Seems that to turn evil in a just Republic and to then go on to participate in the transformation of the Republic is more ambitious and driven than it is "quicker and easier".
Yet if the "Republic falls" some indeterminate time before the "Empire forms", I suppose that means there was some intervening period of the "New Order"? I guess that some proto-Empire fascist order might serve as a good political milieu in which it would be personally expedient for Little Orphan Ani to break bad.
That's kind of what I gathered from the Guide as well. That Palpatine's initial rise to power resulted in the New Order as a more militant and fascist political party which after some time eventually led to the formation of an Empire. Since Palpatine was young when he was elected president, and even resisted by Mon Mothma it is likely that this is when he started expressing his goals for a New Order. All of this alludes really well to the Nazi's in real-life. Corruption and poverty; A charismatic new leader steps in promising a "new world" or rather a "new order" to replace the old; And eventually it turns out that this guy is actually plotting to take over the world and rule it as a dictator. Palpatine's evil here is show through him being a darksider, he's literally a being of evil powers. (The novelization of ROTJ really emphasizes this to the extreme.)
Heck the Clone Wars could even be an allusion to WWII, except in this case the bad guys eventually won.
What's interesting is that if you read up on COMPNOR you'll keep seeing the name New Order pop up constantly (heck it even stands for Commission for the Preservation of the New Order) so I guess that it's the empire's official name, while the Galactic Empire is more of a description of what the New Order is/has become.
(As a side note it's interesting how the Empire remnants in TFA is called the First Order. It's an interesting throwback to the original SW canon and might even suggest a post-empire attitude where they are trying to establish themselves as the true "Order" among several other remnants, which some of the interviews have suggested that there are. I wonder is this is Abrams just being a fanboy or if it is Kasdan bringing back some of his original ideas.)